A Good Day
by crackers4jenn
Summary: Post-5x24. After the credits, this is my version of how things go. A good day is not necessarily always your happily ever after.


It's cold and she has her dress on and she has somewhere to be. There's someone. There's an elevator, and she's wearing her dress, she's wearing it for Denny, and Izzie thinks about, feet moving and mind racing, how she always forgets how cold it is inside the hospital.

He'll be happy to see her. He'll laugh and tell her he's happy to see her and it'll be a good memory to have later.

There's something holding her back and she thinks it's something she forgot. A lamp to turn off or the oven or maybe she forgot to tell Meredith not to wait up for her, because she's making memories tonight.

It's cold and she has her dress on and she has somewhere to be. There's an elevator, and she's wearing her dress, and she's wearing it for... she's wearing it for someone, for Denny, maybe. He'll like this dress. He'll say it's sweet, but not as sweet as her, and she'll roll her eyes and ask if he's enjoying the morphine drip as much as she is.

She has her dress on and she's wearing it for someone. The elevator stops and she smiles and when the doors open, there's George. She smiles, and there's George.

She's wearing her dress. She's cold and she's standing there and it's George.

"Hey," he says, stretching out syllables that aren't there.

Izzie smiles. "You came."

He looks happy. He's George. "I wouldn't miss this for the world. You know that."

She's got all this room, it's such a big elevator, and it feels like there's no time. "Aren't you coming?"

"Iz..."

"You should come, George. I want you to come."

"Come with me."

She's wearing her dress. "I have..." She has somewhere to be. "You aren't coming?"

Fading. Flickering. "Get out of the elevator, Izzie."

It's cold. She forgot something. The lamp is still on. Or the oven. "I'm making memories tonight. I'm making memories, George."

"Izzie, get out of the elevator."

"What are you wearing?" She laughs. Breathless, carefree. It catches in the air and weaves around them, weaves.

"_Please._"

The elevator closes. She hears him. _Iz. Iz... Izzie!_ It's George. That was George.

She smiles. She has somewhere to be.

-----

She's not wearing the dress.

"This is a good day," Izzie says, a breath of content to back it up. The sun is out. The sky is blue. It's a very good day.

Denny is lounging beside her. "I like this day," he agrees.

"I thought you would be gone."

His laugh is low, raspy, amused. "Why're you always so fast to get rid of me?"

"Derek cut into me. He cut into my brain. He was supposed to cut you out."

He's staring at her. Her eyes are closed, but she sees him. Feels. "That was the plan."

"He cut into me and you were supposed to be gone. So why aren't you gone?"

His words sound heavy. Content, sun-on-my-face, wind-in-my-hair heavy. Which makes sense, because they are outside, after all. "Nasty side effect of prolonged hallucination."

Her eyes are closed, but she feels him. Feels the sun. "Is that what this is?"

"What do you think this is?"

"A nasty side effect of prolonged hallucinations. It has a nice ring to it. Sort of infomercial-catchy. So, are you?"

"What do you think?"

"I think," she sighs, "that it's too nice out to care."

They're side by side. The sun is out. The sky is blue.

Denny is there.

---

Alex chased after Dr. Webber, rounding on him, cut him off. "That's it? This is all we do? Izzie's in there--" Voice breaking, he started again, "--she's plugged into that damn _machine_, and we just walk away? As doctors, we just walk away?"

Cristina wouldn't look at him. Richard looked beaten, defeated. He looked sympathetic. A grief counselor discussing the 10 steps. "We did everything we could. I'm sorry, there's nothing else."

"Nothing--? It's _Izzie_! Everything. We do _everything_ for her. We don't leave her like that--" He pointed, but couldn't look. Izzie on the bed. Izzie with a tube down her throat, air pumped in and out of her body to keep her alive. A switch. That was the difference between Izzie living and Izzie...

Cristina cleared her throat. "She signed the DNR. We shouldn't have even..."

Izzie had that _tube_ shoved down her throat, that plastic tube, and they were walking away. They were walking away. "You can't be serious," he said, felt his nerves bubbling under his skin, his grip on reality slowly start unraveling. "You can't be..."

Richard gripped him on the shoulder. Paternal. "It's done, Karev."

Cristina brushed past. "I can't be here."

----

There was a relief when Cristina saw Meredith. A relief at being able to pour all of those useless feelings out of her into her friend, her non-judging, understanding friend, her friend who would be heartbroken and sad and they'd share those feelings together.

Cristina wasn't a crier. She was a stuffer, a shove feelings way down inside person, a suck it up and quit whining person, but she was a person. A person who came unequipped when dealing with their own life tragedies, but still, in the areas it counted, she was a person.

Meredith was there. It was the hard the part. The bad news part. She was a doctor, she delivered bad news all day. She wheeled around a crash cart and shocked the life back into people, but sometimes that didn't work, sometimes she had to bottle it up and be a doctor.

She saw Meredith. Lump in her throat, she said, "It's Izzie." It was the bad news.

Meredith's eyes were wide. They were red and wide. "It's George."

"It's _Izzie._ She's..." Cristina was a doctor. Detached. She could deliver this like a doctor.

"No, it's _George_." Meredith was crying. Ugly crying. My fiancee left me at the alter and all I feel is relief crying.

Cristina held onto Meredith. Held until the words came. "The John Doe is George," she said, and Cristina looked for the blanks that she was missing. And Izzie was still hooked up to all that machinery. And Alex was probably punching walls.

Meredith pulled back, puffy-eyed, make-up smeared. "It's George. George is dead."

The words were stuck in her throat. "O'Malley's intervention. I forgot... but..."

"He's _dead._ Dead, Cristina. No pulse-dead, morgue-dead, our friend-dead."

"But..."

"He's _dead._"

----

The sun feels amazing. Not too hot, not too heavy. Perfect.

"I saw George," Izzie tells Denny. Wind flutters at her face.

"O'Malley? That must've been weird."

"It was George. George is never weird. George is the anti-weird. Except when he's being the full-on weird."

A low laugh. "I take it back, then. It must've been the anti-weird."

She doesn't laugh. She does open her eyes. "It was. It was, and it wasn't." She breathes out deep and closes her eyes. "I saw George. That means something, and I don't know what."

"Maybe he was saying goodbye?"

"Maybe he was going somewhere. Somewhere with costumes."

"Or saying goodbye..."

"That doesn't make sense, though. George doesn't wear costumes." A sigh. "Whatever."

"Izzie..."

She won't open her eyes. "Don't. You're going to say something, it's going to ruin the whole day. Don't."

"I don't have to say it. That's the remarkable thing about what we have here: you already know what I'm thinking 'cause you're the one who thought it first."

Her eyes open. The sky is turning gray. There are clouds where before there was just blue. "There is nothing remarkable about what we have here. And you're wrong. You're wrong about this, and you're wrong about George."

Even-voiced. Stupid calm, not-pushing even voiced, he says, "Okay."

"He wasn't saying goodbye. He wasn't. That's not his style."

Again, "Okay."

"Besides, why would he be saying goodbye? Derek cut the tumor out. I'm going to wake up. Any second now, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to remember what my friends tell me for longer than three minutes, and this will all be a memory. A really vivid memory, but a memory."

Clouds cover the sun. They make Denny's smile a shadow across his face. "A good memory."

"So George doesn't need to say goodbye, okay? No one says goodbye." She settles again, closes her eyes. The sun is gone, but that's okay. It'll be back. Of course it'll be back. "No one says goodbye."

"No one says goodbye," he agrees.

The clouds begin to part.

Izzie smiles. "This is a good day."


End file.
